


May Angels Lead You In

by crinklefries



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M, One-Shot, Real Madrid CF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-15 02:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/844245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crinklefries/pseuds/crinklefries
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p> </p>
  <p>    <i>to think i might not see those eyes</i><br/><i>makes it so hard not to cry</i><br/><i>and as we say our long goodbye</i><br/><i>i nearly do</i><br/></p>
</div>
            </blockquote>





	May Angels Lead You In

**Author's Note:**

> **Ships & Characters:** Sergio Ramos/Fernando Torres, Fernando Torres/Olalla Dominguez (implied/up to yr interp), Steven Gerrard, Xabi Alonso, Iker Casillas, Jesús Navas
> 
> **Word Count:** 6,333  
>  **Rating:** PG-16
> 
> **Disclaimer:** If this was true I would actually kill myself.  
>  **Notes:** Three songs you need to listen to and _listen_ to before/while you read:
>
>> 1\. [Run by Snow Patrol](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOBs8dU4Pb8)  
> 2\. [Signs by Bloc Party](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TooEjrCnUWw)  
> 3\. [Hear You Me by Jimmy Eat World](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pQo9OQlIB8)  
> 
> 
> AU. Whether or not Sergio is a footballer is up to your interpretation.
> 
> I don’t know if this turned out the way I wanted it to or if I even got across what I wanted to. I hope someone feels what I wanted them to feel, because this was a difficult piece to write, for multiple reasons.

there is a place, just below the sacre coeur where hearts go to settle and eagles spread their wings to touch the sweeping grace of the city. when you sit there, atop the sloping grass of a hill braced against a bank of white stone, green picking into your ankles and knees pulled close to your body, you can see history spilling out across your brow. it's the distant past, of kings and glory lost gone, or maybe it’s a taste of the future, of what you can guess but barely see. you breathe in air that has been untouched except for the grace of god and when you exhale, it’s twilight that you paint out across a horizon not marred, but set by a city of something beyond man. 

as the subtle creams of twilight fade into the dark blushes of dusk, you can shift and the world shifts with you. it’s subtle, like a baby’s first breath, a ripple unknown to anyone but you, but to you it’s a world of difference.

 

there is a place, just below the sacre coeur, where the heart can see beyond the eyes, where the world is so vast and you are so miniscule that maybe, just maybe, you can understand why paris is the city of love.

 

fernando breathed quietly, the lights of the city sweeping into life, from one corner, farthest from the sunset, and spreading across the middle, like an epidemic. when it reached the top, lights burned into his eyelids and he was sure he could taste light on his tongue if he just tried hard enough.

beside him, a figure. not so much shifting as moving, as leaning comfortably into something he knew was entirely his. 

“i think i know what you mean,” fernando said. his voice, fragile and soft, barely broke the air around them. down the hill, a puppy ran from its owner to a little boy. fernando smiled.

“about what?” sergio murmured. his cheek, already pressed into fernando’s arm, moved against soft cotton as he tilted his head up. 

“sometimes, i think, you just have to look outside of yourself.” 

an arc of lights as the tour d’eiffel glimmered into existence, starting at the bottom and winding toward the top. a plane crossed overhead and someone on the white steps switched a dial. a tinny musical accompaniment was just what the doctor prescribed. no static, but the laughter of young boys and girls, far too young to be linked, arm-in-arm, mouth-to-mouth, made for a good substitute.

sergio seemed to think about those words, what they meant. fernando ran his fingers through long strands of brown hair. they moved in the wind, but stilled under his skin. the younger man seemed to blush, seemed to smile something that spread across his entire face, that lit it as brightly as the arc de triomphe, the white of teeth set against honey tan as breathtaking as the curve of the champs élysées. 

he murmured something that the wind caught, but fernando did not. fernando’s fingers reached the bottom, fingers brushing against a nape warm to touch. sergio tilted his head up and fernando moved forward. when they kissed, it was under the cover of dusk. their lips moved together, foreheads touched. fingers braced on thighs and shoulders, spread across cloth and chilled skin. 

fernando could taste the happiness on sergio’s lips. 

it was warm, like the spanish sun. 

“i think i would choose you over the world,” sergio’s whisper traced fernando’s mouth. 

he could feel the flush spread across his cheeks before sergio could see it and sergio could see the love in fernando’s eyes before fernando could feel it. 

“mi parajito,” sergio murmured into fernando’s tinged neck. 

“gitano?”

“will you say yes?”

fernando’s heart stuttered. a breeze ruffled across god’s land. the sacre coeur rang out another hour that settled deep into his chest. 

“really?” he asked quietly. he bit his lower lip, not wanting to assume.

the puppy, bored of its owner, bounded up and licked at sergio’s toes. he laughed and wriggled them for it. 

“will you say yes?” he repeated.

it wasn’t hesitation so much as a moment so perfect that just one syllable could shatter it. 

but moments were meant to be shattered, especially when better ones lay hidden beneath.

his lips brushed the hollow under sergio’s ear.

“si.” 

 

there is a place, just below the sacre coeur, where the grace of god’s city manifests in the simple beating of touching hearts. there is an indentation in the grass, a few yards from the white stones of steps reaching down toward man and god, where two hearts came as two and left as one. 

when they stood, when they brushed off green from their knees and backs, when their hands tangled together and they climbed over the fence toward firm, concrete ground, fernando's left hand glinted where it had not before.

 

_Fernando remembers the first time he saw Iker cry. Face red and scrunched, emotion drawn across features usually so stern and solid, the tears from a saint himself were the first indication of a World Cup that was not his or theirs, but Spain’s._

_This time, it’s different because it’s not the tears of a saint, but the tears of a captain, of a brother, of a friend, of a man. He crumples to his knees, holds his knees to his chest, takes in deep, shuddering breaths that make Fernando’s throat taste like glass shards._

_When Iker cries this time, he sobs. It’s guttural, it’s low and comes from somewhere deep, maybe his stomach or his chest. His fingers curl into his hair and Fernando can feel the pain at the end, his follicles crying out for respite._

_Fernando wants desperately to laugh, but he doesn’t think he remembers how to. Iker’s shuddering body signals that maybe the older man might not either._

_He bends down, mechanically wraps arms around his friend, his brother, his captain. Iker shakes his head and pushes his face into Fernando’s chest. Fernando’s fingers run through short hair and they remember another time, when they ran through longer strands._

_Something inside his chest contracts, but Iker’s breaking and Fernando doesn’t know how to._

_Or maybe it’s just that he’s shattered already._

 

he often teased sergio that it had been a seduction. it made him sound more in-control, more focused, to shift the blame to the gypsy with gold for a heart. sergio often laughed in response and mentioned that if it had been a seduction, then he must have been a damned good temptress. and really fucking hot. and really fucking good in bed. 

it's not as though fernando could particularly disagree. 

 

they spent so much time together at hotels, in hotel rooms and hotel beds alone, that it was really surprising that it was nowhere near a hotel. maybe that was just as well, because hotels always reminded fernando of shameful trysts and affairs and—as he would say, grabbing sergio’s face between his pale fingers—this was not a tryst and it was not shameful, it was _never_ shameful. 

instead, like everything about them, it was unassuming, unplanned, because there was nothing about eating popcorn on sergio ramos’s couch that immediately drew the connection to sex. well, nothing except for sergio ramos. 

sergio moved his body languidly, easily, shifting until his head was in fernando’s lap and legs were dangling off the side of the couch. fernando, absentmindedly watching a movie he had no interest in, was running his fingers lightly—through sergio’s hair, over sergio’s forehead, across the shell of sergio’s ears and to the hollow underneath. he ran his fingers up and down sergio’s jaw and only stirred when the pads of his thumbs, running across the bottom of sergio’s lips, caused the younger man to freeze. 

the space in the room stilled, electricity licking up from the ground in its place. fernando's eyes were trained on the television, but his breathing shallowed as sergio’s hand, resting on his arm, slowly crawled up. 

he could taste something in the air, but it only dried his throat. he licked his lips and tried to swallow, but getting past the lump in his throat proved more difficult than expected.

sergio's fingers slipped under his shirt and the muscles in fernando’s stomach tightened, because he couldn’t remember how they had gotten there. he felt the pads of thumbs and index fingers feel up dips in his muscles and when they stopped around his nipples, fernando took in a sharp breath and finally looked down. 

lips parted, eyes trained, sergio looked hungry. it was breathtaking. it made fernando’s stomach twist. 

fernando doesn’t remember much of the rest. what he remembers is less memory and more instincts. sergio's fingers pulling him down, lips colliding, tongue and teeth working past each other. fernando's moans and sergio’s bites, hands raiding up and down expanses of bare skin and muscle when clothes were suddenly made unnecessary and ripped off for the impatience it took to tug or pull. sergio straddling fernando’s thighs and fernando’s nails digging in to skin that was soft beyond compare. sergio's groans and hungry kisses, marks that showed up brightly against skin that was more cream than anything else. 

fernando traced the hardened v above boxers that were discarded seconds later and his movements only halted when sergio pushed past his own elastic. they didn’t leave the couch, but they pushed into one another, tasting heat on skins and tongues and muffling cries that were telling in the underlying message. 

at some point, the movie ended, but what fernando remembers are the soft kisses and murmured words sergio left up his chest, across his shoulders, down the line of his jaw, under his ears, on his lips when they were done. 

 

fernando often insisted that their first time they _fucked_ , but sergio often shook his head, laughed, and wrapped his arms around the striker’s shoulders, flowering his shoulders with kisses again. 

…yeah, fernando hadn’t believed himself either.

 

_It was always unnerving, sitting across from Xabier Alonso. If ever a virtue was made for one man, patience was created for Xabi. His movements were almost always non-existent, the blinking of his eyes so slow that by the time his eyelids closed and opened again, there was little left to do but scramble to hide—secrets, words, corners tucked in close._

_Fernando is too tired to avoid that gaze, too old to make up excuses that will, for just a few seconds, give him respite from Xabi._

_Xabi says nothing, simply sips at his coffee. Across from him, Fernando can feel tension and it curdles in his stomach; makes him feel almost painfully sick. Xabi blinks and Fernando is close to screaming._

_“What?” he snaps, almost viciously. His own coffee lies, forgotten, in front of him. Somewhere along the way, Xabi had insisted on buying him a bagel. That, too, lies untouched if, indeed, it had ever been acknowledged._

_“When was the last time you ate?” Xabi asks slowly, carefully._

_Fernando blinks, glares._

_“What?”_

_Xabi reaches strong fingers forward. Before Fernando can move away, Xabi’s fingers curl around his thin, frail wrist. They wrap easily around, completely, and Xabi takes a sharp breath in._

_“Niño, you’re skin and bones.”_

_A fire starts in the pit of Fernando’s stomach. He snatches his wrist back, or at least tries to. Xabi’s grip is firm—almost too firm—and Fernando can’t remember the last time he felt so weak._

_“That’s none of your business,” he clenches his fists. Fingernails dig in to almost translucent skin. His limbs shake, belying the truth. Betraying him, he thinks._

_“What are you doing to yourself?” Xabi asks after a moment. His face is pained, his voice is soft. Something stirs in Fernando’s heart before he remembers that he doesn’t have one anymore._

_“I’m fine, give your sympathy to someone who—”_

_“I’m not giving you my sympathy, Fernando,” Xabi frowns. He finally withdraws his hand. Fernando snaps back his arm, as though he’s been burned. “I’m offering you my care. Like any friend.”_

_Fernando doesn’t even consider this. He pushes himself to a standing position, chair screeching against the wooden floor. Patrons stare. He doesn’t give a fuck. Fernando’s breathing harshly, but he can’t remember how he got this angry or when._

_“I don’t need friends.”_

_Xabi shakes his head sadly as Fernando flings down money on the table._

_“Niño, he wouldn’t want you to do this to yourself.”_

_Fernando freezes. There’s ice where his limbs should be, boiling flames where his stomach should be. He can’t tell which is which. A sob curls in his throat and he swallows it whole. He’s probably going to throw up._

_Instead, he flings his cup of water at Xabi._

_“Fuck you, Alonso.”_

_He turns on his heels and storms out of the café._

_He doesn’t turn back around, so he doesn’t see Xabi bury his face into his hands, shoulders shaking._

 

“hi my name is sergio ramos!” the new kid beamed. 

fernando stared at him, confused. he was an exotic creature, almost blinding in how different he was. in how immediately comfortable he was in his own skin. 

he opened his mouth and grinned, showing a row of braces. fernando raised an eyebrow and sergio ramos smiled sheepishly.

“fernando torres, right?” he prompted and fernando suddenly remembered himself. 

“oh. yeah,” he agreed. he finally remembered to stick out his hand. “fernando torres.”

sergio ramos laughed and shook it enthusiastically. his hand was abnormally warm and soft against fernando’s. the contrast of brown on white was almost startling, but then so was everything about sergio ramos. he shook his head and long hair whipped back and forth across his shoulders. 

fernando tilted his head. his mohawk stayed in place. 

“i hear you’re fucking amazing,” sergio said. 

“oh. i'm oka—” fernando remembered what his mama had said about it being rude not to accept compliments. he colored. “i mean, thanks.”

sergio cocked his head in response, before letting out a loud laugh. before fernando knew what was happening, sergio threw his arms around fernando’s shoulder. fernando's head spun at the warm smell of spices and baked bread, simmering under some cologne he didn’t know. 

“you’re cute,” sergio declared and kissed fernando’s cheek before running away toward the rest of the boys who were warming up.

fernando’s cheeks were bright red even as he stretched.

 

sergio ramos was good. he played a little too aggressively and his technique was far from perfect, but when he played defender, it was almost as though the position was made for him. fernando watched him all of practice—watched the way the ball rolled off his feet, watched the way he laughed any time someone called to him. watched as his eyebrows furrowed and he bit his lips whenever the coach told him to improve on something. he watched the way sergio knocked into people on purpose, how he gave hugs on purpose, how he gave kisses to cheeks on purpose. he watched the way sergio’s braces glinted in the sun, the way his hair seemed to glow under golden rays, how his eyes crinkled whenever he smiled because he couldn’t just smile with his mouth, he had to smile with his whole face. 

after practice, fernando waited for his mother to pick him up. sergio sidled up to him. he was exhausted, but freshly showered. fernando could smell strawberries in his hair. he wanted to bury his nose in and breathe deeply, but he refrained. 

“you _are_ amazing,” sergio grinned, throwing an easy arm around fernando’s shoulders. 

“what?” fernando colored again. it didn’t exactly stop him from watching sergio’s face. 

“you only scored a few times today, but—i could tell. you had that glow about you, you know?” sergio not only spoke with his face, but with his entire body. he gestured into the air, into fernando’s space. “like, i could tell. it was _there_ , niño.”

“…thanks?” fernando stared, wide-eyed. 

sergio beamed.

“i’ll always defend you,” he said.

fernando’s breath caught in his throat. he figured he should give an intelligible response, but he couldn’t think of one.

“you’re the one, fernando torres,” sergio said instead. he said it like he meant something, although fernando couldn’t figure out what. his mother pulled up to the curb and sergio clambered in while waving at the older boy. 

when fernando’s own mother pulled up and asked him why he was so pink, he wasn’t able to explain. his heart was hammering too much to form words anyway. 

 

later, fernando would say that the first time he met sergio, he had known that sergio was special, but not _that_ special. later, sergio would say that he had known from the second he had seen fernando that he was the most beautiful boy he had ever seen. 

 

…later, fernando would disagree, saying no one in the world had ever and would ever compare to sergio ramos.

 

_45 minutes into the match with Manchester United and the score is 1-2 to the Red Devils. The Reds, trying desperately to catch up, cast about their eyes, hoping to connect with one another. Meireles to Agger, who takes it down the middle, dodging around Red Devils with faces, but no names._

_Agger looks around and sees his captain battling with a defender. There are very few Reds open, but a Devil is overtaking him and now is the time to pass._

_Somewhere near the front, Torres is stalling, looking calm—too calm. Agger makes eye contact and passes just before he’s tackled to the ground._

_The referee doesn’t blow a whistle and the ball arcs to Torres._

_Inches away, Torres seems to forget how his legs work. They tangle together and his movements are so slow, so belabored, that the atmosphere seems to be sucked into suffocation somewhere around the net._

_Agger doesn’t see how it happens, and neither does the rest of the crowd. But one moment Torres is attempting to move and the next he’s on the ground, two defenders sprawled out to either side of him._

_He doesn’t clutch his ankle, doesn’t hold his knee. He barely even moves and that’s what terrifies the rest of the team._

_“Nando—Nando mate, come on,” Stevie mutters, grasping Fernando by the shoulders. Medics are rushing to the field. The Reds who aren’t arguing with the referee are running toward him. Still, Fernando lies prone. “Mate, are you okay? You’ve gotta get up.”_

_Fernando’s eyes, glassy and blank, stare up at the sky as though he’s searching for something there. If he realizes he’s fallen in the middle of a game, he gives no indication of it._

_The medics are catching up quickly. Before anyone else can get to them, Stevie bends down, grasps Fernando’s wrist tightly between his fingers._

_“I know what you’re doing, Nando,” he whispers urgently. His eyes, large and worried, dart over the Spaniard’s face. “But this isn’t the way. You’re not bringing him back, you’re just hurting yourself.”_

_When Fernando doesn’t respond, Stevie lets his wrist go. Seconds later, medics pile around the two and Stevie backs off. Fernando, unresponsive, is soon carted onto a stretcher. His limbs sprawl wide, lifeless. Fear settles around Stevie’s heart, but he hides it under his captain’s armband._

_As he’s being moved off the field, Fernando’s eyes stutter and find Stevie’s. His mouth moves, but no sound comes out. Stevie catches the words anyway. His blood chills._

He’s not coming back.

 

_Fernando stays out for the next two games. No real medical report is released, no real reason given. When he starts again, he’s unstable. Stevie tries to catch his eyes time and time again, but there’s nothing to catch. Fernando doesn’t score; not then and not for the next few games. He gets subbed out earlier and earlier and it’s a wonder the medics only have to stretch him off once more._

_When Stevie calls Xabi, the Spaniard just sighs._

_“There’s no cure for a broken heart, Steven. Just time.”_

_Stevie hangs up and sighs. That much, they both know._

 

at first, it was an exchange of looks, smiles saved only for the other, touches that lingered just a little too long to excuse. at first, sergio would brush their fingers together and fernando would tug on the ends of sergio’s hair. at first, they were conspicuously like best friends, just maybe a little more, just maybe a little closer to something indefinable.

then, they were more. when they crossed that line was a matter of interpretation, but suddenly it wasn’t so strange for sergio to be curled up against fernando’s side as they watched tv. suddenly, it wasn’t out of the ordinary for fernando to seek the warmth of sergio’s hand as they walked. suddenly, it wasn’t uncommon for either of them to pull the other into a corner and fill it with giggles and murmurs, with touches and soft, exploratory kisses.

it was inevitable, iker said.  
it was fate, sergio smiled. 

 

_It’s not immediately obvious when he senses someone approach. The sea pressed against the back of his eyes, salt water spraying lightly into his hair, his heartbeat moves slowly to the rhythm of the tide. After a while, he synchronizes, one breath for one tide, and it’s only when the air moves around him that he stirs._

_He can taste her before her feet dig in to the sand, before she bends, before she makes her own little spot beside him. Years ago, maybe, this would have fit, but now the indentation is just another promise unfulfilled._

_For a few seconds, there is only the beating of the sea. Then a small breath._

_“Flori told me I might find you out here.”_

_Fernando tastes something bitter on his tongue and opens his eyes._

_“I thought I you would be in Liverpool,” Ollala says. Her eyes look out toward the point where the sky meets the sea. Fernando would find it poetic if he could bring himself to look at her. He can’t._

_Instead, he tilts his head up toward white._

_When he says nothing, Olalla sighs and presses a hand softly onto Fernando’s arm._

_“Where’s the sun, Fernando?”_

_Fernando feels acid lick up his throat and he swallows boiling water._

_“Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.”_

 

the green knit together; an unending, uninterrupted carpet of foliage. somewhere ahead, fernando could see hints of gold glinting off strands of brown silk. he blinked and suddenly it was gone. in its place was more green.

“you’re a fucking football player, why are you so fucking slow?” sergio called from up ahead. any other person would look annoyed; sergio was bordering on laughing. 

“your backpack isn’t as heavy as mine,” fernando protested, shifting his sack on his back to prove his point. 

“you mean my ass isn’t as big as yours,” sergio grinned and ducked quickly under branches as fernando let out a strangled noise and tried to quicken his pace to exact revenge. 

loose rocks and pathway dirt slipped under the traction of his shoes and, unexpectedly, he went tumbling forward into the brush. 

sergio's laughter could be heard from a mile away.

 

“fuck, i'm never letting you choose again,” fernando grumbled, wheezing as he finally reached level ground. 

he dumped his backpack on the ground next to sergio’s and stretched his sore limbs, another complaint on his lips, when sergio appeared at his elbow.

“shhhh,” the younger man insisted as he held an index finger to fernando’s open mouth. “shut up and close your eyes.”

fernando, of course, opened his mouth wider in indignation, but his sounds were muffled as sergio took his lips between his index finger and thumb. 

“shut. up.” he smiled sweetly. 

fernando glared and did as he was told. 

his mother had always told him that cutting off one sense heightened the others. it’s not that he hadn’t known that, it’s more that he had never had a reason to. shaded eyes and silence on his tongue, fernando took a breath. what he inhaled was not air, but clarity, translucent and crisp to the ridges of his lungs. the sweet smells of pines and nutty wood tempered by earth and rocks; a taste as familiar as the warmth covering his hand, tugging him forward.

his feet felt the ground, the sticks sharply cracking beneath, and he wondered what the pitch felt like; if he had ever felt it before. there was a smile on his lips as sergio let go. fernando knew it was time to open his eyes when he felt arms around his waist.

“happy birthday,” brushed against his ear as he fluttered awake. 

before him; a view that caught in his throat. a steep drop into eternity from the top of a peak that looked out and found the world at its base. he thought he could see footsteps of trees far below, a road twisting away into cities resting under the blanket of siesta. gulls cried in the far distance and fernando could feel the water beating against the edges of crags and calcified sediments.

sergio's nose nudged his jaw and fernando remembered to exhale. he turned his head and sergio licked his lips for him; leaned forward and caught three words on his tongue.

_i love you_ , fernando blinked.

“i love you,” sergio said.

 

_The first time Fernando sees Jesús after that night, he thinks the younger man looks haggard. He’s thin cheeks have sunk in and large blue eyes are blinking away weariness that seems to have settled into his bones._

_“Fernando,” he says and the tiredness creeps into his voice too. It cracks and he turns his face down._

_Fernando wants to reach out, because Jesús looks solid—even though he might not feel it—but he can’t seem to move his arms. There’s a frog in his throat, an elephant on his chest, angry bees stinging his eyes. He can’t breathe._

_So Jesús, being Jesús, does it. He reaches his smaller arms forward, wraps them around Fernando’s shoulders. Someone trembles, but neither know who._

_Jesús lets go and Fernando realizes it’s him._

_“Do you still believe in God?” it comes out like a whisper; a secret between them._

_A pause and Jesús looks toward the sky._

_“Every day.”_

_Fernando licks his lips and closes his eyes._

_“…how?”_

_The real question is clear—_ why? __

_It takes a minute for Jesús to reply, but when he does, it’s with a kiss to Fernando’s cheek._

_“Because someone has to take care of him now.”_

 

above all, sergio hated saying goodbye. it was his one rule, the one, unequivocally enforced guideline in his life.

“saying goodbye is shit,” he had always insisted. “what’s good about a bye?”

 

“fuck you torres, you owe me,” sergio had laughed. fernando could hear distant sounds of crinkling plastic and zippers in the background.

“you’ve never visited me before,” fernando had protested. he had shifted his weight from one foot to the other, held the phone more firmly between his shoulder and ear as he stirred the spaghetti in its pot. 

“yeah who wants to deal with rain and clouds and fucking snow?” even over the phone, fernando could see the smirk on the younger man’s face. 

“i think you’ll survive,” fernando had smirked back. he had reached forward to turn off the stove, when his ring had slipped off his finger and fell into the sauce. “ _fuck_!”

fernando had glared and frantically grabbed his wooden spoon to try and swim the ring out. 

“nando?”

“ugh, fuck, sese let me call you back.” the ring had refused to resurface and he had been getting agitated.

“nah, it’s fine. i’ll just text you when i land,” sergio’s voice had sounded distant. he had probably just finished packing. “you have the details?”

“yeah,” fernando had answered, distractedly. 

“i love you,” sergio had said. fernando, occupied as he was, hadn’t tried to catch the smile over the line like he usually did. 

“love you too sese—fuck, okay i have to go.”

“see you soon,” sergio had chuckled.

without thinking, fernando had slipped.

“goodbye.”

 

_“fernando,” jesús sobbed into the phone. “fernando, it crashed. it crashed, there are no survivors. fernando.”_

it's a funny thing, death. it's never real until you turn on the news and see the wreckage for yourself.

fernando sank to his knees. collapsed onto kneecaps that smashed into tiles, sent shocks of numbing pain rocketing up through sinews tightened by lack of breath. every muscle pulled, blood clotted before circulating, and a gaping, piercing hole spread in his chest where his heart should have been.

there's an emptiness you feel; a debilitating, bone-shattering, suffocating loneliness when you realize that after everything, that after all of the sunlight and happiness in the world, that after years of love, all it takes is the click of one button. you can turn off the news, but, in the end, he’s still not there.

in the middle of cold, hard squares, with his lungs pressing into the back of his throat, body doubled over from already festering wounds, and molten, red-fire streams down his face—burning to touch, burning to feel—fernando pulled his hair and screamed. 

 

_It’s sunny, the day of his funeral. The sky, which has been overcast and wet for weeks without mercy, is the brightest blue he’s ever seen. It hurts Fernando’s eyes more than his chest, but maybe that’s just relative._

_There’s a line, a crowd, an entire town, a family; a million people he loved and who loved him._

_The one he loved best, turns away from an empty casket, hollow eyes looking for something they won’t ever find._

__“In his life, he was larger than this. Almost statuesque,” Jesús’s voice says, trying to soothe cracks that have appeared in the frame. He turns his eyes up, to the cloudless sky. “May angels lead him in.”

 

_It doesn’t rain and the clouds don’t return. The sun beats down almost stubbornly, as if showing that it, too, has a memory to share._

 

it was never a matter of if, but when. because, if fernando was being honest, it had never been a matter of _if_ , had always been a matter of _of course_. if anything, fernando had been the one surprised because how could sergio—sergio with his innate beauty, with his laughter, who was larger than life at the worst of times—how could sergio want anything he had to offer? 

sergio laughed at the hesitation on fernando’s face; at the trepid longing, at the soft pink that spread across freckled skin. he brought his hands—large, warm, smooth with a hint of rough—to fernando’s face; framed milk between fingers of coffee. his thumb brushed fernando’s bottom lip and he gasped, breath startled on lips.

“i want you, niño.” sergio rested his forehead against fernando’s; closed his eyes and inhaled grass and a warm spring day. “god, i have wanted you for so fucking long.”

with his heart beating on the edge of his skin, fernando didn’t think he could feel any warmer than he did then. he leaned forward, licking his lips.

“me too. sergio—” the words felt soft on his tongue and he pressed his mouth to sergio’s cheek. “sergio, me too.”

sergio opened his eyes and smiled.

when their heads tilted together, when their lips met—and sergio’s fingertips brushed his cheeks and his fingertips ran through sergio’s hair—fernando couldn’t keep the smile from lighting up his face.

 

_“I brought some empanadas,” Olalla tugs on a plastic bag by her feet. The plastic crinkles and the noise disrupts Fernando’s concentration. In any other life, he would wrinkle his nose. Now, he just sighs._

_“I’m not hungry,” he mumbles._

_Olalla presses her fingers into Fernando’s arm again. It doesn’t bruise, but something inside him does._

_“Flori says you haven’t been eating,” she says. Her voice sounds so sad that Fernando can hear it in the cry of gulls lengths away._

__I haven’t been hungry _seems disrespectful to say, so Fernando says nothing at all._

_Finally, Olalla’s palm finds his own. It’s smaller, smoother, cooler, more hesitant. The lines feel foreign, like shapes he can’t recognize. She understands. He can read it in her brows._

_Olalla smoothes her other fingers over his hair._

_“Will you eat?” she asks._

_He doesn’t answer, again, and her face finds the sweeping arc where his neck meets his shoulder. He feels salt on his skin._

_“Have heart, my dear. We’re bound to be afraid, even if it’s just for a few days.”_

_The tide breaks across their outstretched feet._

_Fernando shudders and takes a bite._

 

he doesn’t wear a suit. he doesn’t wear a tie or slacks or even a nice jacket. he wears ratty, worn down jeans with holes where the knees should be. he wears a graphic t-shirt that was picked up sometime along the way; probably with sergio, probably at sergio’s behest. he doesn’t hide under sunglasses or a hat; he wants to feel the sun beat down on his sensitive skin today, he wants to feel its rays warm his now-dark hair. 

he feels it on the back of his neck, slicking it with a sheen of sweat, and he twists it, pops a crick that’s been developing there. his breathing is low and shallow, but steady. he carves his nails onto his palm as his feet stutter to a stop, as his eyes find the slab of grey so unbefitting, so uncharacteristic that it makes bile rise. 

he chokes on it, but bends to his knees anyway. his fingers, alarmingly thin, read forward and brush over indentations so new that he can feel the sharp edges on his fingertips. 

fernando takes in a quivering breath.

he’s brought no offering; just himself.

 

“i know you’re not there,” he chokes out, because the words have bored holes into the back of his head, the back of his eyes. the very reality he’s been running from there; in front of his eyes, undeniable and solid as stone. “sergio, but i don’t know where you are.”

his hands are shaking, then his arms, then his shoulders. slowly, he withdraws his fingers because there are tremors running through his entire body and breathing hurts so much that he has to clutch his stomach.

“where are you, sese?” he asks the stone and tears burn down his face. the stone doesn’t answer, and fernando’s heart shatters. 

 

“ _where are you?_ ” he asks again, louder this time—almost infinitely, almost screamed to feel the strain in his throat, to know that it’s there—and this time, this first time—this second time, this last time—he allows himself to sob until his lungs are crying out too. 

 

it reminds him of a hill under the sacre coeur, of a peak at the end of a dirt trail, of the beaches in galicia. it reminds him of a pair of bright, brown eyes, of long hair he loved to run fingers through, of ink splayed across tan skin under his mouth. it reminds him of life, and then it reminds him of none of these things at all.

the bay stretches out before him, the guadalquivir emptying into a stretch of blue that extends beyond his vision. it's symbolism, he thinks, a greater life swallowing a smaller one. only sergio had never been the smaller life, so fernando wonders where he fits into life’s picture. there was a bright spot of color, once, a stroke that was out of place simply by its sheer beauty. it never fit, but only out of necessity, never out of choice. now, fernando thinks, it’s gone and he wonders whether or not he imagined the painting at all.

“are you ready?” a soft voice asks near his shoulder.

no. but that had never mattered. 

fernando nods his head slightly and olalla hands him the urn. she steps back, gives him the space he needs to say goodbye.

but he doesn’t.

“what the fuck is good about a bye?” fernando laughs out through bitter tears. he shakes his head and twists the top. 

the wind stirs what’s resting inside and olalla wraps her arms from behind—steadying him, always steadying him—as he closes his eyes and tilts the insides out. 

he doesn’t watch the ashes fall, doesn’t watch them catch in the wind and be carried out, doesn’t watch the person he loves most drift away from him, on the currents of the atlantic.

 

“wait for me, gitano,” fernando whispers. “because this isn’t goodbye.”

 

he turns away, the fleeting taste of memories on his tongue, and olalla lets him bury his heart in her arms. 

 

there is a river, just past the warm earth of sevilla, where life empties out into an ocean larger than the heart’s eye. on the bank of this river, where the sky meets the sand, there are two hearts. one broken, shattered, and one lifeless, no pulse. one, scattered among the blue, reaching the edges of the sky, floats as free in death as it did in life. the other, bound to earth by time, barely beats. there are times when it remembers—remembers life, remembers happiness—but mostly it remembers what was and what never can be. 

there is a bank on the golfo de cádiz, where the guadalquivir runs past the warm earth of sevilla and meets the cold water of the atlantic. on this bank, on worn rocks of hot spanish blood and burning spanish words, one heart, spread across the depths, waits patiently for the other to join and the other, caught in place by divine hands and the beat of mortality, is impatient to reunite.

 

on a hill, just beneath the sacre coeur, fernando slides off his ring and lets it roll off his palm. the gold glints as it falls into the grass and moves down the gentle, sweeping slope until it’s swallowed by god’s city itself.

_and if you were with me tonight,_  
 _i’d sing to you just one more time._  
 _a song for a heart so big,_  
 _god wouldn’t let it live._

Hear You Me | Jimmy Eat World


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